First, Claire volunteered to clean out winter from the hen house. About five overflowing loader buckets (liberally soaked with water to aid the composting process) and the hen house was ready for fresh bedding, and next year’s compost is on the way.

Many plants and seeds and mulch found their way into the garden as well. We got the recycled lumber tarps out of the barn, Linda planted a bunch of peppers and tomatoes. I went to the neighbors via the bumpy dirt trail between the crop fields and retrieved two loads of loose straw from the loft of their barn and put the tomato cages on, pounded the stakes in, spread the mulch and wet it all down.

This photo shows some hearty garlic on the right, a cattle panel trellis that we put up this weekend.  It has pole beans on the outside and lettuce and spinach underneath, hopefully to last a bit longer into the summer with the shade of the beans.  To the left of the trellis is some space reserved for viney plants before a row of tomatoes.  It’s nice to have that mulched portion of the garden already weeded for the whole season!

At the end of the day, I took some time to pull thistles from the pasture.  It appears that last year’s pulling them out by had greatly reduced the population in the paddock we tested last year.  We’ll continue that on the other paddocks this year.

Here’s a link to the story for more details. Many luminaries attended,including the President of Iowa State, CEO of Pioneer, and Governor Branstad.  Most everyone except the Governor stayed on course in addressing the youth except the Governor couldn’t help but make his pitch for Lean Textured Beef whatever.

On the downside, the kids are wiped out after staying up through the after-prom party.  On the upside, everyone gets to wear their prom gear for another formal event!

Here’s Emma and Tyler before prom at dinner.

Emma with all her peeps just before heading off to prom.

Doesn’t this look yummy?

The new power supply didn’t work, so it was a good thing that this box recently arrived.

The meltdown also came in the middle of a contract writing project that was nearing a deadline. So between those two things, I haven’t been breathing too much lately. Perhaps things will decelerate to more manageable pace for a few days and I can get caught up.

The canoe was sitting lonely in a farm shed somewhere in Jasper county.  She hadn’t been in the water for over a decade and we were lucky enough to be picked as her new home.

Shes’ 18′ long and was made in the late 80′s with western red cedar and not seen much water since then.

Despite this annoying imperfection in the hull, a good refinishing should take care of this stain on an otherwise serviceable canoe!

His disease didn’t affect his playing as much as his singing. Here’s a little Dueling Banjo action as evidience.

All in all, it was a nice evening. I don’t ever remember people with such big contented smiles leaving a concert before. If we could all be so lucky to have the chance to take our family along on one last journey of doing what we love to do best, with the full understanding that this is the last go-round, but being able to savor every moment along the way.

Some of the trees handled it better than others. This walnut got nipped – all the mulberries turned crispy. Many of the cherry and peach trees have already blossomed, so I’m hopeful the newly fertilized fruit bodies can withstand frost better than the anthers and stamens in a flowering bud, but time will tell how the fruit trees fared. It would be a bummer to have a season without apples, peaches, cherries,a nd pears!